When I’m not geeking out over design you can probably find me geeking out over film. I spent a good 7 years of my life working behind the counters of various video stores across Western Canada and consider myself an avid film nerd.

So it’s not surprisingly that my jaw nearly hit the floor when a coworker introduced me to the wonderful world of Polish film posters a couple of years ago. These conceptual masterpieces put the original American posters to shame every time; they are truly beautiful works of art. Trimming this list down to a mere 50 posters that I absolutely love was surprisingly difficult.

From a majority of the movies I know, this is a collection from the 70s-80s, kind of explains why they look like they’re from a magazine from the 80s.
They’re all cool and all, but movie posters weren’t screened (as bad or well, however you want to look at it) by the CCCP communist pig censors. So, the artists actually put political commentary in the posters. That’s why a good portion of them don’t relate to the films, at all. I love the star wars and indy ones.

Are u ppl blind? These are garbage. It looks like they were drawn with pencil crayons and markers by a ten year old. We live in a world of photoshop now. These poters look to be drawn in Microsoft Paint. Get with the times man. I like vintage design just as much as anyone else but these are just terrible excuses for art. Very lazy designs here that seem to be whipped up in minutes by whoever created them. If this is what it looks like throughout Poland, then they are missing out big time.

@Bukator: Maan, these are freom the ’80s. Do ypu know what does that mean? Did you ever draw with your hand, made you own silk screen to create gradients and shapes? Design your own typeface, not usin some font found on the web? I mean you can do real stuff now, I dont say phostosopin or he mighty Illustratoris bad at all, but these are great work. This is where today vintage shit is grounding from. just my 2 cents.

Many of you may call these “art”, but maybe you are just giving them too much credit because they are old. To me, they just remind me of all those dirty, boring, drab things from decades ago. Like watching TV shows from the early 90’s.

I love good art, and don’t get me wrong. The modern hollywood posters are not that great, but at least they have some vibrant color!

Nowadays, all that these posters would do is depress people and make them think that the films were boring! I’m surprised that so many people like these. It just gives me a sinking feeling in my gut. Uggh!

pretty sure its to do with copyright laws + stuff like that, they weren’t allowed to use the actual pictures so they had to make do with whatever they could draw. not cos “poland is stupid” like what most of u retards are thinking

I’m from Poland. Thanks for appreciation :), although I don’t find all of them so great.
However that kind of graphics/posters are visible in our theaters and other places. I’m talking about Cracow cause that’s where i live.
I think that ‘style’ distorted and unclean developped at the beginning of 20th century, 1st, 2nd world war… But actually posters , leaflets were always wery important to my country – they were used to maintain nation’s good spirit and patriotism in the time of wars and slavery (200 years).
Here’s an example if someone is interested: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/84/Poland_First_To_Fight.jpg/180px-Poland_First_To_Fight.jpg

@Bukator: We have photoshop 😀 Some Poles has won couple of international photoshop contests recently.
We also have cars, really lol 😛 and washing mashines, ipods, iphones and other rubbish and no, bears don’t eat ppl on the streets and winter does not last nine months hehe
peace

Some fantastic work in this collection. I can understand why so many comments have been negative. All these posters completely break with the slick airbrushed vernacular of modern Hollywood movie posters. They remind me of theatre posters, that continue to use the hand drawn ‘arty’ style.

Too bad not all countries do as the poles and design their own movieposters. The official ones from the moviecompanies are often of no artistic value. Hopefully this will spread and I look forward to see something like this in Sweden.

However, it has to be pointed out that not all of the posters here were made during the communist era. The “Breakfast at Tiffany” poster and the “Raging Bull” one are very recent productions – and I’m not sure whether they were in any way supposed to accompany official releases.

Hi there!
Some folks wrote that the collection is co depressive and they are right, but good poster always shows not only the product but also the market and the customers. Years of communism were not very funny and all of this sad times you can find on these posters.

At the time (and up until something like the mid 90’s almost) a lot of the films in Poland were dubbed into Polish, with a rather bland voice-over, and the posters were made into Polish versions so that the public could understand them. The artists doing the posters were often quite well known (maybe not outside their circle, but they received a lot of respect) and it enabled some struggling artists to make small money during very difficult times. And yes, some made statements. Poland is a very creative country, thoroughly maligned, with a film industry that has produced some of the best films out there. That their poster industry is also artistically great is a reflection of how much films are/were important to many people because they made you think, more than just ‘entertainment’ . I am out of touch with the Poland of the last ten years, and I expect it has changed an awful lot.

Some beautiful art. Some of these are absolutely inspired; proof of what designers can do if given a free reign, and not dictated to by the client. Can you imagine that Empire Strikes Back poster being approved by LucasFilms? More’s the shame!
It’s not surprising how many people don’t like this, we are conditioned to expect advertising to reflect exactly what’s in the box; modern advertising leaves no space for imagination and creativity. I think these works of art paint a much more emotive story than photographic posters can.
Thanks for putting together the collection.
Hand-painted Indian film posters are also worth a look. Oh and don’t forget, not all films shown in Poland are bland Hollywood imports, there’s some great Polish cinema around too

Wow, I have to say I really enjoyed the entire perspective change in these – not all were exceptional artistically, but showed some real style missing from the original US onesheets.

Art grown in isolation during the cold war by our creative friends in Poland and across the Eastern Bloc, especially poster art, has a remarkable feel to it – even propaganda posters are sometimes beautifully composed and works of art growing in a different ecosystem from the West.

Anyone who doesn’t like these is just experiencing a fleeting moment of ‘non-hollywood’ syndrome; that is, anything that doesn’t conform to their hollywood-centric view of films is viewed with suspicion and even fear. The fact that a movie poster could communicate something other than “watch our film, make us money” just doesn’t compute for them. That said, clearly some of these posters were made by people who hadnot even seen the film (not surprising when the film is ‘Weekend at Bernies’, though).

Can we differentiate between, fine art, graphic design and illustration?
These posters seem to have been be under some kind of legal constraints. Most of them are are very interesting. As far as people commenting about being depressing, when was the last time you actually saw a movie that made you feel great? Maybe the expectations of entertainment have been compromised some how. Cultural standards, lack of decent actors, directors, scripts.
These are beautiful for the most part. Creative and not made to order. Hollywood has a serious lack of confidence in the general public ability to sift through the crap.

Some are improvements but others just illustrate designers need to reinvent and put their own stamp on work, ignoring the poswer of the original. Can you really improve on the image of De Niro on the original Raging Bull poster? Or the iconic MASH poster with the high heeled peace sign? And Alien. This version is a real dud compared to the original in terms of style and emotion.
I appreciate the creativity but unfortunately the best work here misrepresents horrible films as art.

[…] whenever US movies were released in Soviet-era Poland, the posters were discarded and replaced by new versions by Polish artists. Alternately disturbing and frickin’ awesome, and often containing political comments of […]

These are amazing! Thanks for the post. I have to agree with another commenter though: some of these, while visually arresting, tend to miss the point. That said, I can’t wait to see that hilarious screwball comedy “Terms of Endearment”!

Great great stuff. Some of these posters are for terrible movies though and I would’ve gone to see them because of these great posters. Also, the seem highly literary and psychological. Like good book covers, that give you an instinctual or metaphorical sense of what a book is about without giving anything away and in fact adding to the depth.

A stunning collection, that reminds us how bland the stuff we get in the west is. I suppose the mixed opinions of the posters explains why what we get in the west is so bland though: it’s about maximising profit, not artistic merit.

The Polish do indeed have a long printmaking and poster tradition. I was reading about this a few months ago. These posters are in a style which is very reminiscent of cabaret and theater posters, both still popular events in Poland.

I absolutely love these posters, and in the appropriate circles, these are well-renowned. It is to be expected that people like us, fed on a diet of airbrushed “badass Hulk Hogan with a gun” or “Stiffler/Screech goober face” posters, as well as those of us not exposed or accustomed to stage performance culture, would be unable to appreciate these wonderful works. When I hear “these look like they’re from the 70s/80s”, or comments about Photoshop, which are meant to be disparaging, it becomes very obvious to me what a hick, or how dishonest, that particular person is. A remark like that smacks of soccer mom or WWF douchebag.

Also, just an FYI, Poland was never part of the Soviet Union. It was a satellite who’s politics were under the intense pressure of Moscow, but on paper, the country was a “sovereign ally of the USSR”. In fact, Poland was probably the most progressive of the socialist states. It is also worth mentioning that while the years under communism were indeed oppressive in a number of ways, it is far from the truth to say that people didn’t live completely normal lives. And so I disagree that these posters are necessarily expressing antipathy towards communist rule specifically (although that isn’t to say that some do not allude to the regime). The Party wasn’t the only thing on people’s minds.

I agree entirely with Bob the Chef. One key factor that no one has mentioned so far is that under the Old Regime, all (or most) cultural activities were state-subsidized. After the regime was overthrown in 1989 most of this funding stopped, and many of the country’s best graphic artists emigrated. Those who remained were mostly reduced to doing ads for Coca-Cola or pimple cream.

Hi, great to see some Pokish posters on here. I have been an avid fan of Polish Movie posters myself for several years, and have a couple of hundred of them – from 70s through to 90s (plus a few contemporary ones from this decade. they are in fact amazing – I love them.

Stange not to see “Wozzeck” on here by Jan Lenica, one of the most important and famous Polish posters of all time – though not a film poster at all – it is still brilliant. Check out all Lenica’s posters he is an exceptional artist. Check out also Polish Cirk (circus) posters – they are wicked with great colourful designs.

I have some of my collection on my Facebook profile, just search for me and you will see my album book for Polish Posters.

[…] film posters Saw these posters and thought I’d share them. 50 Incredible Film Posters From Poland // wellmedicated New posters were created for Poland for films and some of them are superior to the originals, some […]

Absolutely stunning. So creative and magical!!! I think it’s funny that people on here don’t ‘get it’. How can you not?????
By boyfriend showed me these a long time ago, but it’s great you have them all in one place now.
It makes our film posters so dull and obvious. The UK and US need to get more creative and interest their audiences instead of dumbing down.

I`m from poland, and can say, that this style of posters is still very much alive in theater. There are 2 places in warsaw you can buy them in, one is in an underground passage, and has the most recent ones, and one is a gallery in the old Town , where print prices go up to a 1000 Euros.

These were a way, in their time, to also camouflage some anti-Party messages, as was most of the art and movies, and theatre in that time.But since, it`s not that obvious, it didn’t get censored.

some of the big names in the poster graphics emigrated to the US, and made most of the graphics for the New Yorker, but also Broadway and all, so don`t put us away as Eastern European school of anything just yet:)

Ever since I laid eyes on the Polish poster for the original Godzilla (which remains one of my favorite posters of all time), I knew that Poland was worth looking into for other movie poster images. Some of these I’ve seen, most I have not. Great stuff all around. I particularly like that the vertical orientation is not required. That “Alien” poster is something else. Not my favorite of those you’ve shown, but it really resonates in how unlike the actual movie alien it is, but also how truly it represents it.

Is there any chance of getting prints of these? I am interested in the “Don’t Look Now” one for my girlfriend. It’s her favorite movie. If you could email me at [email protected] if you have any info. Great collection by the way!

I own a lot of poster books (and advise anyone to find the 9 dollar Evergreen/Taschen ones covering every decade and every possible genre), and this selection here isn’t my favourite. My all time favourite polish posters are the one for Rosemary’s Baby (snake version), the one with the skull for The Birds, OMEN (b&w boy standing up with a devil for a head), the one for Nosferatu by Zaradkiewicz, Kwaidan, Heroin, The Quatermass Xperiment, Innerspace, ET (by Erol not by Pagowski), Westworld, Solaris, The Time Machine, Blue Velvet, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Conversation, Taxi Driver… Ask me for more info on where to see or find them.

i thought some of these were really good,but most of them were just disgusting. the never ending story one for instance is lazy and uninspired. i mean really,its like the guy was commissioned,and the day before it was due,he got drunk and watched the movie and then doodled what he remembered the next morning while eating breakfast before he went to drop it off. the Gandhi one,though,was absolutely beautiful. very Dali-esque. but to call any of these posters better than American ones is pretty off,one because that’s a pretty broad opinion,and two,because every one of these paintings is completely and utterly destroyed by Drew Struzan and folks of his caliber. still very nice and interesting though:D

[…] to shame every time; they are truly beautiful works of art. Trimming this list down to a mere 50 posters that I absolutely love was surprisingly difficult. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. […]

It’s clear that a lot of the negative comments are made by people with little or no appreciation of good graphic design, or any sense of style. This is a superb collection of very very good work. Also a lack of knowledge of the history of design pre photoshop. this typography is great. Open your eyes a little and learn something. I work for a large visual effects company making wiz bang movies, The latest and greatest technology does not always mean the best results.

It’s frustrating (though not surprising) to see the negative comments on this board. It’s too bad that so many folks are so put off by the unfamiliar, when we should all be embracing it. These are all truly remarkable pieces.

To those who suggest that these are poorly drawn: You’re foolish.

To those who suggest that these were created to skirt copyright: You’re incorrect. They were created because, believe it or not, America’s design sensibility is neither universal nor supreme. Poles respond to advertising that reflects their sensibilities, as they should.

[…] More here. By admin Posted in Uncategorized You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. « Where do you have your company party? […]

The current manifestation of Hollywood movie posters serve primarily to showcase celebrity and thus pull in larger box office numbers. Once in a while, there have been major studio releases with creative posters, but for the most part it’s a sea of gratuitously airbrushed glamor shots. In such a sea of mediocrity, these posters are inspiring and a welcome throwback.

[…] seen them: Andrew Lindstrom has posted the most amazing selection of Polish film posters on his blog which you must not miss. From what I understand those are the actual posters promoting the movies […]

It’s funny cuz “Airplane” poster makes no mention of an airplane in the movies title. It actually translates to “Stay Calm, It’s Only an Emergancy”
I agree these are dark and weird but from an artistic standpoint they are way more edgy and cutting edge than the American ones.
I was born in Poland and i actually remember a second grade field trip to see “Critters” I’m pretty sure it was rated R. Poland is awesome!
One more thing… American posters don’t always accuratly convey the movie in another language. So i think rather then just rewording the title they make a whole new poster.

[…] Lindstrom over at Wellmedicated posted on his blog about 50 incredible film posters from Poland. Being a Pole myself, I instantly took to the images and the unique design. Poland has always had a […]

While all of these posters are beautiful works of art and great in all aspects of design they really fail at the “getting the point across” aspect. I really liked looking at them and it has opened my eyes to Polish design. Thanks for sharing.

I grew up in Poland in 70’s and 80’s. These posters represent the dominant artistic mood of the whole country at that time. We listened to dark and complex music, we valued deep literature, we were a rather somber and serious culture- with a romantic twist. It was a direct reflection of political and economic suppression as well as the result of very dominant catholic religious culture. We also looked to England, Italy and France more than the USA for artistic direction and inspiration.
Things have changed since, but to look back at those posters brings back some good and some not so good memories.
As to the colors,

Well, nice posters. I must say we don’t have them in Noir York like above. The thing is – Polish designers at the time of posters’ creation were not forced to work under pressure of making extra big money out of it. They were able to concentrate on the poster itself, not on the superior manager raging over their heads. Posters were aiming at artistic, expressive functions, not just impressive, money-oriented. We must also remember the political environment in Poland at this time. Western style of producing ads & posters would be considered not proper by the officials. Designers had to ‘power up’ all their creativity to make up something good out of ordinary, government approved things.

[…] pm Filed under: Uncategorized I’m in absolute awe and adoration over Andrew’s post at wellmedicated.com that showcases 50 brilliant film posters that are distributed in Poland. Show this guy some love, […]

[…] Desde Polonia nos llega una colección de pósters de películas que son totalmente diferentes a los… This entry was written by testigo and posted on September 19, 2008 at 6:41 pm and filed under url. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. […]

Great collection. Too bad so many people get the words “art” confused with “new and shiny”.

There are a lot of really good ones in this collection, but I think my favorite my people the Crocodile Dundee 2 one… I just love the way the NYC skyline is so subtly shown in the crocs lower teeth. That and the Fatal Attraction one… very subtle, very powerful.

hey people from western countries, try to imagine what our country under communism looked like, the system tried to control everyone – it wasn’t like nazism – to kill. it was worse – made ppl kneel before the Stalin or whoever else… so was the censorship: when writer wrote about ants in his story they insisted on changing that becouse they were filty bugs, when he changed them for a bear – it was too aggresive (like western imperialism) – and you can saw such thinking at every level of life. Remember there is an influence of this in such ^ posters. And by the way to all photoshop lovers – these posters are powerfull traditional art and required a lot of skill from artists – if you cant imagine this obviously try to imagine that artists from Poland in the 80s had problems even with getting quality paint – not like in capitalism when you can buy everything fast

Strange thing… I am Polsih and i must say that i find your fascination a bit odd. I’ve seen such posters in Poland and im not really that excited about them… some of them look like they have won a contest for a poster in a primary school. I must admit that some are good, but some are terrible… The never ending story for example looks like a painting of my five years old sister

jkillah1 wrote:
“I didn’t like most of these… they were to dull! Kind of depressing, actually.
There were a few I liked, but most of them just looked like something from an old magazine from the 80’s!”

cause most of them were from 70s and 80s, when we have comunism here and didn`t have new technologies of producing posters (like computers and printers). Polish Poster School were one of the gratest in whole poster design in 80s, 90s. Check this names: Jan Lenica, Henryk Tomaszewski, Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Młodożeniec, Marek Mosiński, Franciszek Starowieyski, Waldemar Świerzy, Wojciech Zamecznik – most of works here are their handmade.

[…] Poland… these people get it. And Well Medicated has a great list of 50 gorgeous Polish film posters for you to gawk at. It seems that a lot of the posters don’t say anything about the movie and […]

God, I’m crying. MAGNIFICENT!
BUT (there’s always a but), Im thankful for the hollywod shit way of making posters, cause by the poster I know if the movie is good or not. And I never go wrong. With those beautiful and inspiring art I would certainly watched lots of stupid movies.

these are very interesting in a fine arts aspect, but i dont think they are very good at advertising the films…yes, it’s design. but it’s advertising design – the end result is you want the consumer to go pay for a movie ticket. alot of those posters don’t convey what the movie is about, the mood, in fact most times it comes across the opposite of the way it should…i know our US posters are “hollywood”, but at the end of the day, it’s advertising people. if you can make advertising brillant and gorgeous and stunning – that is the ideal. but if you make something brillant and gorgeous and stunning, but no one buys your product, then you failed.

[…] leave a comment » Even in the depths of the Cold War, American blockbusters made it behind the Iron Curtain. But the films we all know, we know through the lens of the society in which we see them… By way of illustration, the design blog Well Medicated has collected “50 Incredible Film Posters from Poland”… […]

[…] Here’s a print made for the movie Raging Bull that was designed in Poland. They keep it simple and allow the images to speak for the film. The parallel boxers shown portray the main character, Jake La Motta’s struggle between his social life and life within the ring. Keeping the color range narrow, the poster grabs the viewers attention, first at the gloves, then leading your eye to the title which is just as unstable and volatile as DeNiro’s character. Follow the link to check out more great polish designed movie posters. […]

I’m inclined to agree, at least with the latter part of the DMC’s comment.

Cosidered as individuals pieces of art, some of these are really stunning pieces but, if we’re talking about their relevence to film they seem too embellished. For better or worse – better in my opinion – posters are advertisements and, as such, need to convery something of the tone of the movie. This is why I’m a little torn on this list; there are some really solid works, and the ones that hit the tonal mark, like Raging Bull and War Games, are truly excellent. On the other hand, I don’t think this interpretation of Weekend at Bernie’s would really appeal to the movie’s target demographic.

It’s awesome to see so many different film posters side by side. They sure differ a lot than the ones we see for major movies here in the states. There not as “advertisement” looking and have more of an art form to them.

[i]It’s funny cuz “Airplane” poster makes no mention of an airplane in the movies title. It actually translates to “Stay Calm, It’s Only an Emergancy”[/i]

Perhapse the poster was commisioned before the movie title was translated, so the artist could be inspired by original title only at that time. Anyway, polish translations of movie titles usually sux ;-/

I’ve seen most of them, and I have mixed feelings… I don’t really see the point of making great posters to “entertainment level” films, such as “The Neverending Story”. They should have been “B-class”, just as the movies are. Entertaining, that’s it.

As an American graphic designer with 20 years of experience, I find these posters inspiring. In my opinion, those who don’t appreciate them are missing one thing: A lesson in the history of graphic design. If all you’ve been exposed to is today’s aesthetic where everything is Photoshopped, I can see why you’d find this stuff to be “ugly”.

Woohoo! Pienkna. Stuff like this makes me a proud Pole.
_live in vancouver-check.
_design nerd-check.
_love this post, and what you’ve got going on here. Gives a great deal of inspiration to a (hopefully) future designer currently stuck getting her art anthro degree. Keep it up, you’ve got another reader.

My grandmother escaped Poland in 1939. I can feel a lot of anger and protest against the war and it’s aftermath in these posters. It may not even have been done on purpose, but when a country goes through such hard times, it cannot help but come out in it’s art. It’s part of the national subconcious.

[…] This amazing website that features 50 incredible film posters from Poland doesn’t include Annie Hall, and it’s not really connected to any diegesis, but I’m going to have to add a number of the posters to my collection anyway. Just too much awesome. The way I see it, they can live comfortably alongside my kangaroo caddy, my skeleton painting of Kate Winslet, my red Swingline stapler, my blue-and-yellow Adidas Roms, and my oil-on-canvas of one dog going one way, the other dog going the other way, and the guy who’s like “Whaddaya want from me?” I suspect they’ll blend in just fine. […]

Your taste and vision of the world, americans, IS WHAT IS DEPRESSING. Things outside your plastic self-consumed world, fortunately, don’t need you, don’t need to please you as a condition to be valuable, against what you could think. Briefly, your opinions, americans, have no interest. Amen.

In 1999, we held an exhibition “Western Amerykanski: Polish Posters and the Western.” The Autry and the University of Washington Press published an illustrated book of the same title that is still available from the Autry’s store. I continue to receive inquiries about this fascinating collection.

[…] Polish Film Posters over at Well Medicated (their title has the usual search engine friendly hyperbole). The lack of Trajan, montaged arrays of heads and super-condensed fonts is refreshing – but seems to have been replaced with a Saul Bass fixation in some cases. I thought this one for Fatal Attraction was particularly minimal and striking. […]

I like these posters very much. Refreshing change from the usual Hollywood fare. However, I didn’t find them jaw droppingly original so much. In fact I think they’re very similar to the sort of illustrations you might see accompanying short stories in magazines like Playboy or even the New Yorker. Doesn’t take away from my appreciation of them though. And The Fly poster is my favourite too.

Such a rad list. Looked all around for a comedic post I was doing on Polish vs. American movie posters and got sidetracked for about 30 minutes on this site. This is definitely the best collection next to agrayspace. Nice.

Hey!
Great site you have here! I’m a big posterfan myself, especially of Polish posters. I’m currently writing my second thesis on this subject, mainly Polish film posters, and I was wondering if you maybe might know some things (like information sources or such like) about this?

Hi! I come from Poland as well as some people who spoke before me. I haven’t seen all of these posters before but I’m proud of designers who had made it. I’d like to thank to my American friend Bill Boehm who shared this site with me and Andrew Lindstrom for introducing me to this art. Way to go! Greetings from my inspirational country:)

[…] (I’m easily distracted), to draw your attention to an amazing set of Polish film posters at Wellmedicated. This was posted last year, and I noticed it while browsing through the wonderful collection of […]

[…] wellmedicated has a beautiful parade of Polish film posters. Most of them are artistically superior to their original American counterparts in every way. I was struck by the similarity of style to the works of Barron Storey, Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiewicz. I did a little research into the style and learned about the world of Polish Poster Art. […]

[…] I’ve posted images of fab Polish posters and other variations on poster design, so this decent gallery at wellmedicated.com is nothing new. What is fascinating is the over 300 comments about the post, particularly the […]

These SUCK. Matthew McConaughey isn’t in ANY of them!!!! what the hell?

I agree that most film posters now are just very badly photoshopped and utterly banal: character pose on background, face shopped onto a stand-in model’s body.

Seriously though, some of these were wonderful but I agree that a large number of them didn’t really communicate the tone or story or themes of the original films. Airplane2, War Games and Apocalype Now made the most sense…

These has been made during times when Poland was at communistic regime and was controlled by then existing USSR and those are mostly American movies from the other side of iron curtain that’s why there so weird at many times. Propaganda and censure made them looking like that. Today we have normal original posters for movies

The Greatness of these posters doesn’t depend on the quality, detail, and other technicalities some people judge great art by, but rather the concepts they portray and the connection between the posters and the films… I would say that these posters give me better insight into what a film is about, and the style in which it is made than most of the (extremely) generic posters for the unnymbered Hollywood releases to hit the screens…
I especially like the one for Fanny and Alexander… Fantastic!
I love the grungy feel, and the fact that these posters are “honest”… Honesty is a continually fading quality in the western world, which we should all learn to appreciate more… There’s bad stuff in this world, and there’s no point in trying to cover it up, it just feeds the miserableness luring in the corners….

[…] always on the lookout for cool posters that aren’t typically widespread. I came across some Polish movie posters a while ago and it opened up another world of alternate movie posters to me. I don’t think […]

[…] 50 Incredible Film Posters From Poland – I really like the CROCODILE DUNDEE. This was written by paperclypse. Posted on Tuesday, July 28, 2009, at 3:07 pm. Filed under Bookmarks. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. […]

I recently visited the Krakow Poster Gallery whilst I was on holiday there with my boyfriend. The posters are even more incredible in real life, especially the original vintage prints. Needless to say we spent a fortune but it was so worth it. I now have a small collection of beutiful original 60’s polish film posters hanging in my apartment and they are something to be treasured.

I posted an earlier message on here a year + ago, amazing how many comment are on here. Well done the author for creating so much awareness of the fantastic Polish Movie Posters. I am currently building my blog that is going to contain 100 PFP from my collection. Since my last post I had 200 posters, my collection now risen to 300, from 50s through to the late 90s and also some contemporay posters produced this decade by current artists making limited edition prints for galleries and collectors Market. There are indeed some wonderful new pieces of work around using more current design techniques – Photoshop etc, and done of these have to be seen.

I’ll add a link on here when my blog is up but if anyone wants to contact me about my collection – 60 of which are framed and available for hire to galleries.

Re. This remarkable collection here, all great pieces of work many of which are faces is mine, especially the Rosemary’s Baby, but what is missing are some of the more vibrant, bold and colourful works of the 70s, which I will give great examples of in my collection.

I want to add one thing, imagine the dark grey streets if Zpoland during the reign of communism, these posters, posted outside cinemas and on town notice boards etc also brightened up otherwise grey and drap streets, artists used the art to
Enlighten people’s lives adding colour and beautiful surreal images to enrich the community scenes. Imagine such colour and great art displayed on street corners, this would have been a pleasure to see, would never happen in our Western cities, only in art galleries. Perhaps from this particular collection it’s hard to imagine as many of the inshore are quite dark, but I will really try to give many different bold and colourful examples in my blog. Watch this space.

Sorry about some of the typo errors in my last post just now. I just typed this on my iPhone on the busy morning train to Manchester, and this predictive text on the iPhone is a pain as if you slightly miss spell a word it changes it completely! If there’s a way to edit this post I would.

If it’s one thing to say for this, I would say this is the result of people being placed in a position they perhaps didn’t quite understand at all, but were given free reigns to do what they liked, and this is the result of working with such terrific artists who put brush or pen to paper and came up with these surreal, dazzling, unusual approaches to promoting a film to the public. The Polish School of Poster and the people who contributed to that school certainly showed what was possible in their home country during the heights of the Cold War. It’s also interesting if this school still survives today in some form or another, though I haven’t seen any recent posters to see how they’re doing it at all these days, though it would seem sad if it died.